Aw, Heck Nawwwwlins.

Ack! 

Everything is out of order on this blog, but I'm just going to power through. 

Bear with me. 

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Straight from our Seattle trip in March, we headed down to New Orleans to meet up with a bunch of our friends who entered a competition to benefit local young entrepreneurs. It worked out well as we were able to explore the city on our own during the day and had the company of our close Tuck friends as soon as 5pm hit. We stayed at a hotel around the corner from them and were able to easily join them in all festivities!

And they won the whole freaking competition! Wahoo! Beat Harvard!

Congrats, friends!

As it was my first time in NOLA, we did pretty typical New Orleans things:

Beignets & Cafe Au Laits at Cafe Du Monde

I had po'boys, Jamie had hurricanes, and I think everything that crossed our lips had been fried at least once before it came to our table. We ate at one of Emeril's restaurants, Jamie tried Pinkberry for the first time, and we soaked in so much of the humidly warm weather! Even with our mild winter, it was fantastic to warm up our bones. 

We caught some sick street performers. They were AMAZING:

I mean, do you see what they're accomplishing here? 

Just in case you don't believe me:

#eyecandy

The effects of Hurricane Katrina are still dramatically impacting this city in easily observable ways, but walking around the pristine Super Dome, you'd never know that 20,000 people were residing here when the roof peeled off to expose them to the rains. Craziness.

Catching some air at the Super Dome.

We missed Ellen and Brad by a few days, but all of our cab drivers were more than happy to tell us all about it! And randomly, Jamie watched Duke lose a basketball game at some point and openly displayed his satisfaction (this was the beginning of a big night, if you can't tell):

(blurry)

Ok, this isn't a New Orleans thing with its obviously-from-Florida plates, but I saw it parked in the French Quarter and did a double take:

A Gucci Fiat?! 

for the record, it was so stinkin' cute....jamie, don't you think we need a 2nd car??

We spent a couple of nights on Bourbon Street (nuts! what is this place?!) and at some point, stopped for some really bad stand-up comedy at the House of Blues (hey, it was free), but preferred our evening on Frenchmen Street to enjoy some real music, drinks, and more local fare. As you'll note, this blog post is free of photos from our late evenings*.

*needless to say, we had a good time.

before the really bad show

St. Patrick's Day is like Mardi Gras Light with carnivals and parades starting super early:

days before St. Patrick's festivities were scheduled to begin

(note: the early morning beer on this guy)

We had a fantastic time and can't wait for the next trip. Hopefully, we'll be smart enough to schedule an afternoon flight out of our next destination:

early morning at the airport with Len (T'13)